AWESOME PANTS! "advanced beginner" may be a stretch, though

Posted by Kathy on 4th Sep 2012

Oh, how I love these pants. The only reason they get 4 instead of 5 stars is because the pattern itself could have used more details to help the “advanced beginner”. I'm wearing the pants at work right now, and they're sooooo gorgeous! I've been sewing my own clothes for about a year now; I have a 35" inseam and extra-long arms, too, so I just lengthen patterns to fit. I have made about 9 pr. of pants - mostly from the usual manufacturers (McCalls, Burda, etc. - ones with VERY detailed instructions.) I fell in love with HotPatterns earlier this year, though (because they are SO MUCH MORE STYLISH than ANYBODY ELSE!!!), so I bought this pattern, just knowing I'd love the pants, even though I expected a little trouble with the pattern itself (I had made the Weekender Track pants and struggled some with the less-than-detailed instructions.)

For this pattern, I ran into some issues where she obviously assumes the sewer is smarter than I am (no comments from the peanut gallery.) It could have been that I was thinking too hard and needed to just take a step back, however. Bottom line is I could have used a little more guidance with the waist area and the right side/wrong side (of fabric), as well as right side/wrong side (of pant - like am I looking at the right side of the fabric on the right side of the pant? or the wrong side of the fabric on the right side of the pant? AGH!); I also had some problems with what to attach to where at what point on the waist pieces with the same right/wrong and top/bottom of waist issues. The one pic in the instructions where you attach the full waist unit to its copy (without the buttonholes) made my eyes cross and could have used some arrows or shading to indicate that the thing needs to be FLIPPED, not placed directly on top of the other piece. …Or something more useful that makes more sense. That waist confounded me for a good long bit. Once I stopped looking at the pic and started using my own logic (yes, I do have some), I figured out what I needed to do. In addition, I've never put a pair of pants together in the way you have to with these (because of the pockets), and it took me 3 --yes, 3-- un-doings of my inside-of-pant-leg stitches to get the inside of the crotch to NOT look like a jumbled blob of fabric. I'm so used to the 'attach-the-sides and then the crotch' way, that my brain just COULDN'T figger it out that I had to do the BACK crotch first, then attach the inside legs. Another thing that I think ALL patterns could use is the “if you’re going to finish your edges (say, with a serger), finish *THESE*edges, and leave *THESE* edges unfinished until you attach *THESE* together” sort of thing. Luckily, I figured that out when I did the muslin.

My personal opinion, once I put the muslin together, was that the zipper was completely unnecessary, and a bunch of extra work, so I just made a faux fly instead. My next pair will not have a tie, either, as it adds too much bulk in the front of my waist, and forces me to wear a loose shirt to hide the wad of fabric from the bow in the tie; since these hang so nicely, I want to show all that I can with a slimmer-fitting shirt! I also had to add about 8 inches to each side of the tie in order for it to be long enough to be tied (without strangling my waist). I'll just do full elastic on the next pair and skip the ties altogether.

Let me repeat that these pants are FREAKING FABULOUS. They just have this 'neat, clean' look to the drape that my other loose, comfy (tie-waist) pants are missing. I made a size 14 (for my big butt) in mid-weight linen, used an old pillowcase for the pockets (those came out SO CUTE!), and I look like a skinny supermodel in these bad boys; my hiney looks GORGEOUS. I will be making at least two more pairs of these, for sure, now that I've figured out the parts that were stumping me! HotPatterns has the most gorgeous products out there, and I will continue to buy them over and over again! I use them to learn, as well as to create my super-stylish wardrobe pieces!